Tough, Caring Alternative

Maybe they didn’t know we cared.

Cared enough to roust them out of their bunks at 6 a.m.

Cared enough to run them ragged for 16 hours a day of relentless exercise, hard work and studies, for a stretch of 90 days or more.

Cared enough to make them do something really tough, like uprooting a patch of poison oak or reading an actual book or maybe even turning their troubled young lives around.

A three-part series by Times Ventura County Edition reporter Scott Hadly and photographer Spencer Weiner published last week told the remarkable story of the Tri-County Boot Camp, a new alternative to Juvenile Hall and other traditional facilities for youthful offenders.

We salute the hard work of the court, probation and law enforcement officers who created this worthy effort--and also the hard work of the young men whose futures depend on its success.

Although started mainly as a money-saving way to get young offenders off the street, this program has the potential to be not just cheaper but more effective than the standard lock ‘em up approach. County officials should closely monitor its “graduates” and look for creative ways to make the boot camp experience even more life-changing.

Opened in October as a joint experiment by Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, the boot camp aims to redirect boys who seem headed for lives of crime.

Politicians, judges, police and social workers have invested their hopes and $1.1 million of public funds in the program; 40 young men invest four months apiece at the camp, near the Santa Ynez River in Santa Barbara County.

At Juvenile Hall, these boys would spend just two hours a day in school and then kill time watching television or hanging out. At boot camp, each day is a nonstop dash from predawn wake-up call to the hard labor at forest maintenance to the afternoons and evenings filled with schoolwork and calisthenics.

The idea is for counselors and detention officers to teach leadership, mutual respect and family responsibility through strict discipline.

Although boot camps have been a popular tool for straightening out criminals for a decade, few have proved any more effective than conventional prison terms. Either way, about 70% of the inmates never return to jail. An added 22% return once or twice, and about 8% are considered hard-core offenders who keep breaking the law.

But for Ventura County it was cheaper and quicker to open a boot camp with two neighboring counties than to build a new juvenile jail. Its three facilities for juveniles are all filled--or overcrowded--and the number of youths coming through the system has more than doubled since 1985. Officials estimate it would cost $20 million to build a larger replacement for the aging Juvenile Hall.

The Tri-County program has learned from others’ mistakes and added extra attention at the most crucial point: The tricky return to the real world when the offender’s sentence ends.

To help that transition, the boys receive job training and remedial education while in the camp and close supervision after they leave. For at least six months they must check in every week with probation officers, who conduct random drug tests, help the boys find jobs and make sure they go to school.

It’s too soon to say whether the Tri-County Boot Camp will be more successful than other efforts. But earning self-respect, learning job skills and brushing up on neglected studies seems more likely to do some good that mere incarceration.

The community should stand behind this effort to give a growing problem the attention it demands. We do.